Sunday 10 February 2019
And now for some good news......
David Morris, CEO of EDO NSW: Our argument was based on science, economics and – we argued - the
proper application of the law. The climate contention as a ground for refusing
this mine was innovative; the first time climate change has been addressed this
way in an Australian court using the concept of a carbon budget as its basis.
Like so many great ideas – its strength was its
simplicity. While there was lots of necessary evidence and discussion about the
carbon budget, geopolitical climate policy and Australia’s legal framework for
climate change, ultimately our argument was simple: if you accept
the science, then the local legal framework compels you to refuse the mine
because it’s clearly not in the public interest to increase emissions.
As Professor Steffen said “it’s one atmosphere,
it’s one climate system, it’s one planet - and so we need to start thinking
more carefully about the net effect of wherever coal is burnt, or oil or gas…
The project’s contribution to cumulative climate change impacts means that its
approval would be inequitable for current and future generations”. [EDO NSW, media release, 8 February 2019]
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
8 February 2019:
When Planning
Minister Anthony Roberts intervened a year ago to give a coal miner
the unusual right to challenge its project's refusal in court, neither would
have countenanced Friday's outcome.
Instead of settling the
future of Gloucester Resources' controversial Rocky Hill coal mine near
Gloucester, the NSW Land and Environment Court just cast a cloud over coal mining
in general.
The miner had thought it
was merely challenging the Department of Planning's rejection of the mine's
impact on visual amenity in the bucolic valley around Gloucester.
Instead, the
Environmental Defenders Office, acting for residents opposed to the mine,
grabbed the opportunity to join the appeal.
In what EDO chief David
Morris describes as a "delicious irony", the court got to hear about
the project's detrimental impact on climate change and the town's social fabric
- despite Gloucester Resources arguing such intervention would be a
"sideshow and a distraction".
Future generations will
wonder why it took so long for any court in the land to hear such evidence when
considering a coal mine project.
But Justice Brian
Preston didn't just allow the EDO to provide expert evidence of the role
greenhouse gas emissions play in driving climate change. He also accepted it as
part of the critical reasons to reject the mine. "The decision forms part
of what
is a growing trend around the world on using litigation to fight
climate change," Martijn Wilder, a prominent climate lawyer from
Baker & McKenzie, says. "While early on some of this litigation was
not successful, increasingly it is."
Gloucester
Resources Limited v Minister for Planning [2019] NSWLEC 7, 8 February 2019 judgment here.
Labels:
Berejiklian Government,
climate change,
coal,
court,
law,
mining,
New South Wales
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